De-indexing subdomains that I can't register in WMT

[MikeNoLastName]

Hi All,
I'm stumped on this one. Somehow G has 'discovered' two generic subdomain home pages on our server and they are both indexed. They are cpanel.example.com and ns1.example.com (we have our own name server). Both are "legitimate" I guess, but not something we have any control over or ever would have submitted to G. We can't place confirmation code on them to tell G webmaster tools that we are the owners, so we can tell them to remove them, nor can we place meta noindex code on them (I think they are generated dynamically?). They both resolve to an identical, system generated, generic "Congrats, If you have reached this screen everything is working fine with your new server setup, yada, yada". Thus automatic 'duplication penalty' in G. Something I surely wouldn't wish on my worst competitor of course ;-), and NO idea how G got a hold of it, a-hem! (Never try this at home kiddies.)

Any suggestions on how to get rid of them from the G index? I'm burnt out tonight.

[goodroi]

#1 - Do you really need to get rid of them? Are they causing ranking trouble or impairing business? If this is just a cosmetic issue it might make sense to ignore it and focus on bigger profit making tasks.

#2 - Thanks for this interesting challenge, it is definitely not an everyday simple issue. Most of the common methods for removing accidentally indexed content will probably not work here. I assume you can't block access to the Google IP addresses for these subdomains. What about deleting the current nameserver and recreating it at a different url?

[Content_ed]

Are you using wildcards for subdomains in an IIS setup? I noticed this problem for the first time last week, got rid of the wildcards in the setup so the imaginary subdomains no longer exist.

[MikeNoLastName]

goodroi: Glad to know I challenged somone, thought I was jusr dumb :). I think I DO need to get rid of them if the latest I've been reading about 100% duplicated pages on subdomains causing duplication penalties (and the fact that the domain is currently Pandalized) is true.

Seems 90% of our Panda issues have been caused by G algo related oddities and "short comings" as opposed to intentional or controllable issues.

Content_ed: I don't think we are using IIS (Isn't that MS Windows based?) as it is Apache/1.3.37 (Unix), so not sure about the answer to your question.

The domains are not REALLY any more imaginary than say a mail server, or Name Server, but the fact that when browsing them using ns1.example.com they routinely respond with the same generic "hello world" window when browsed and SOME (possibly evil competitor?) out there turned G onto them, maybe by an intentional link from their buried page, screams of a fix needed by Google for eliminating generic server software windows from the INDEX and the duplication penalty?

Thanks all, still trying.

[edited by: MikeNoLastName at 8:47 am (utc) on Nov 29, 2011]

[Robert Charlton]

Wildcard subdomains can be a problem with Apache as well as with IIS.

[MikeNoLastName]

So how would I begin to fix it? We had the host set it up originally and touch that part as little as possible.

[topr8]

i don't use cpanel so have no idea how to do it using that.

however in httpd.conf make sure the first virtual host listed in the file (this is the default), will serve a 403 or 404 for all requests.

then all requests to domains/subdomains that are not specifically listed (after the default in the httpd.conf) will be served a 403 or 404.

although goodroi #1 makes sense to me.

[MikeNoLastName]

It IS pretty amazing how many (7M+) results you get if you search on G for:

"If you can see this page, then the people who manage this server have installed cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) which use the Apache Web server software"
(With quotes)

Wonder if G has figured out yet that... they ain't all SYNDICATORS or SCRAPERS! And removed any penalties. :)

[topr8]

Thus automatic 'duplication penalty' in G.

i think you misunderstand penalties.

i don't think that serving a generic holding page to requests for 'non existant' subdomains will cause any kind of penalty.

it's not duplicate content, i think if you are having ranking issues you should be looking at other things.

[MikeNoLastName]

Even if they are both currently indexed in G?
One as searchable and the other as supplemental?

[leadegroot]

'duplicate' means its showing the same content as your 'real' domain.
Is it doing that, or is it displaying some sort of holding page?
if its a holding page - forget it.
If its showing a duplicate of your real site, then you can control it with the real site - the 2 standard solutions (to my mind) are either a canonical meta tag, or simple 301 to the correct url.

[g1smd]

Since the URLs do not return any content from your site, there is nothing to worry about.